Competitive Engineering: A Handbook For Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Using Planguage (Paperback)

by Tom Gilb (Author) "Competitive Engineering (CE) is about technological management, risk control, and breakthrough improvement in complex business systems, projects and processes..." (more)
Key Phrases: complex quality requirement, keyed icon, evolutionary project management, Impact Estimation, Percentage Impact, Percentage Uncertainty (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'This stuff works. Competitive Engineering contains powerful tools that are both practical and simple - a rare combination.' -- Erik Simmons, Intel Corporation, Requirements Engineering Practice Lead, Corporate Quality Network

Review
"This stuff works. Competitive Engineering contains powerful tools that are both practical and simple - a rare combination. Over the last decade, I have applied Tom Gilb's tools in a variety of settings including product development, service delivery, manufacturing, site construction, IT, eBusiness, quality marketing, and management, on projects of various sizes. Thousands of engineers have been through Competitive Engineering training and Planguage workshops that I have authored. The vast majority of students immediately recognize their value and go on to use them beneficially on projects. Competitive Engineering is based on decades of practical experience, feedback, and improvement, and it shows."
- Erik Simmons, Intel Corporation, Requirements Engineering Practice Lead, Corporate Quality Network


"Fundamentally, the book presents a new take on best practices in systems engineering and management. The book passed my value-added test, when I realized that I was photocopying several pages for future reference, to be part of my "toolkit" of helpful tips and techniques. I particularly enjoyed reading the 10 often witty, summary principles in each chapter.Perseverance pays off with Competitive Engineering. The book is not a quick read, which Tom acknowledges. You have to carefully study some of the pages to understand the concepts being presented. The reward occurs when you glean the nuggets of wisdom from the numerous practical examples, case studies, and Planguage examples. Tom's way of presenting the CE concepts makes the book a useful addition to the systems engineer's library."
- Jerry Huller, Raytheon

"I found Planguage to be an interesting and noble idea for the enhancement of communication in the product development environment.Systems engineering professionals wanting another perspective on applying SE techniques to real product development and those wanting to add additional techniques/ methods to their toolbox will gain most from this book. Readers should have a fundamental knowledge of systems engineering principles and some practical product development experience to realize the full value of this work. I found the chapters describing "Impact Estimation", "Evolutionary Project Management" and "Specification Quality Control" to be specifically relevant and ripe for application to various product development environments.

Overall, the book passes my acid test as a useful reference for Systems engineering professionals... Tom meets his objectives in providing a current definition of Planguage concepts and providing a handbook of fundamental SE principles ready for application with his practical experience and unique product development perspective."
- Martin Coe President-Closed Loop Engineering, Technical Program Director- INCOSE Colorado

".for those professionals serious about tackling the requirements specification effort in any real project. I am excited about it. He offers his Planguage for structuring the system engineering process and gets at issues of risk, success and failure criteria and evolutionary project development in a rational way. This book is a must read, re-read and study for students and practitioners working in the murky area of mapping the problem domain to the solution domain.It is, as promised, a Handbook. Buy it, and you will use it. It will not collect dust on your bookshelf. This book is a wonderful contribution to our Software Engineering literature."
- ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, January 2006

"Competitive Engineering is an original, experience-based, stimulating, thought-provoking, entertaining, and well worth reading software engineering book."
- IMPROVE, Software Process Improvement Newsletter

"Tom Gilb, the father of the Evo methodology, shares his practical, real-world experience for enabling effective collaboration between developers, managers and stakeholders.
Although the book describes Planguage (a specification language for systems engineering) in detail, the methodological advice alone is worth the price of the book. Evo is one of the truly underappreciated agile methodologies, and as a result, Gilb's thought-provoking work isn't as well-known as it should be, although I suspect that that will change with this book. The book describes effective practices for requirements and design specification that are highly compatible with the principles and practices of Agile Modeling, yet it goes on to address planning activities, quality and impact estimation. I suspect that this book will prove to be one of the "must read" software development books of 2006."
- SD's Agile Modeling Newsletter, February 2006, By Scott W. Ambler, Ambysoft

"I found the rules, principles, and process descriptions associated with the Planguage method particularly interesting and helpful."
- Jayesh G. Dalal, Software Quality Professional, June-August 2006

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann (June 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750665076
• ISBN-13: 978-0750665070
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #684,227 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Systems Engineering for Competitive Advantage, October 24, 2005

By	C. Haskins (Bergen, Norway) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Competitive Engineering (CE) presents an updated contribution from Tom Gilb to the topics of systems engineering, software engineering and agile project execution. As a handbook, this work does not require the reader to have read prior works, although one is frequently invited to visit his website for additional information. From the title page, the reader receives an open invitation to enter into dialogue with [...].

Tom writes from a long practical background and with confidence that the Planguage Methods really work - if one is willing to give them a chance. However, this is not a new tyranny of methodology, but rather a rich tool set that can be adopted and adapted by a team or an organization.

The essential elements of Planguage are requirements specification (Chapters 2-6); Impact Estimation (Chapter 9), a technique unsurpassed in its ability to track the progress of a project toward achieving critical objectives; and evolutionary project management (Chapter 10), first introduced by Gilb in 1988. Specification Quality Control (Chapter 8) builds upon his earlier work on Inspections, see Gilb and Graham 1993. Chapter 7 discusses the design engineering process with cautionary advice about avoiding the trap of letting design specifications masquerade as requirements.

The book comes with a "friendly warning" that the ideas are presented in a very compact style. To ease the assimilation process, Tom includes a list of top 10 principles in each chapter. These pages, along with the "Twelve Tough Questions" in section 1.2, are worth the price of the book - but you may still want to read the supporting material for concrete suggestions about how to implement these principles. The book is also rich in diagrams and summary tables.

The objection most often levied by doubting readers is the uncompromising emphasis on quantification. Those who persevere should experience the benefits illustrated by the case studies that are an integral part each chapter. The title page of each chapter lists the key concepts that follow. One quarter of the book is comprised of the Context Glossary, which provides contextual definitions for those who struggle with the proliferation and occasionally contradictory use of terms in other literature.

CE is for anyone SERIOUS about improving communications within their development environment and thereby reaping the benefits of Competitive Engineering.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant guide to complex systems development, August 13, 2005

By	Romilly Cocking "Agile development coach" (London, England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A brilliant guide to complex systems development
Reviewer: Romilly Cocking from London, UK
This wonderful book explains how to deliver complex systems within time and budget, with a level of quality that will earn you a "wow!"

The book defines the five core processes of Competitive Engineering: Requirement Specification, Design Engineering, Specification Quality Control, Impact Estimation, and Evolutionary Project Management. It includes plenty of practical advice and lots of real-world examples. At the back you'll find a detailed glossary that contains precise definitions and detailed explanations of hundreds of the key concepts used in the book.

I loved the style, which is clear, practical and precise. I found it a demanding but very worthwhile read, not least because of the high density of ideas per chapter. There are things to think hard about on almost every page. Gilb's decades of practical experience in complex systems development are evident throughout the book.

Strongly recommended.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best Practices in Systems Engineering and Management, April 6, 2006

By	Charles J. Huller (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

My interest in the topic of competitive engineering (CE) was piqued several years ago when I heard very favorable comments about Tom Gilb's tutorial on that subject at the INCOSE 2002 Symposium in Las Vegas.

The book's subtitle is "A Handbook for Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Using Planguage". The term "Planguage" is central to an understanding of the book. Planguage, which is derived from a union of "plan" and "language", is the methodology for implementing CE. Much of the book is devoted to describing the generalized processes, rules, and vocabulary of Planguage. Tom notes, "Planguage should be viewed as a powerful way to develop and implement strategies that will help your projects to deliver the required competitive results." Fundamentally, the book presents a new take on best practices in systems engineering and management.

The book is useful on several levels. For organizations without a formal or documented process, tailoring of Planguage would jump start the process at a high level of maturity. For organizations that have achieved CMMI level 3 status, Planguage by itself is not as useful. However, many of the ideas of CE-the Planguage methods-are worth considering for enhancement of existing organizational processes. Tom states that CE is "about technological management, risk control, and breakthrough improvement in complex business systems, projects, and processes." CE is a believable approach for delivering complex projects on time and within budget.

The book passed my value-added test, when I realized that I was photocopying several pages for future reference, to be part of my "toolkit" of helpful tips and techniques. I particularly enjoyed reading the 10 often witty, summary principles in each chapter. Two examples are:

* The Principle of `Storage of Wisdom': "If your people are not all experienced or geniuses, You need to store their hard-earned wisdom in your defined process. Capture wisdom for reuse, Fail to write it, that's abuse!"

* The Principle of `The early bird catches the worm': "Your customers will be happier with an early long-term stream of their priority improvements, than years of promises, culminating in late disaster."

About 30% of the book is the Planguage Concept Glossary, which Tom views as a central contribution of the book. I focused my attention on the other, more interesting, parts of the book, which describe the main CE/Planguage methods of Requirement Specification (RS), Design Engineering (DE), Impact Estimation (IE), Specification Quality Control (SQC), and Evolutionary Project Management (EVO, also known as Evo). RS describes an approach for identifying all types of requirements while avoiding ambiguity and also planning for change. Functional and performance requirements are distinguished. DE deals with identifying, choosing, and prioritizing the order in which design ideas are implemented and delivered. In conjunction with Evo, DE selects the design ideas most likely to provide a significant benefit for early delivery.

SQC is an eminently practical approach for evaluating the quality of any technical document via sampling measurements. An hour of SQC early in a project can save almost 10 hours of rework. SQC also provides a means to assess the success of process improvement efforts. IE provides a realistic method for evaluating-in quantitative terms-the effectiveness of designs in meeting both the requirements, especially critical performance attributes, and the resource budgets.

Evo focuses on early, frequent delivery of project results via a series of high-value, small evolutionary steps. An ideal Evo approach would divide the project into a series of cycles. Each cycle would consume 2-5% of the total financial budget and 2-5% of the total project time-while delivering some measurable, required results to the stakeholders. The next cycle is selected to deliver the best stakeholder value for its cost (highest ratio of value to cost, or highest ratio of performance to cost). Although an ideal approach can't always be realized, Tom provides some convincing examples to argue that there is always a solution to making a project evolutionary (small steps with critical deliveries first).

Perseverance pays off with Competitive Engineering. The book is not a quick read, which Tom acknowledges. You have to carefully study some of the pages to understand the concepts being presented. The reward occurs when you glean the nuggets of wisdom from the numerous practical examples, case studies, and Planguage examples. Tom's way of presenting the CE concepts makes the book a useful addition to the systems engineer's library.